Last week, Colorado got a special nod from President Obama during his State of the Union address. “Take a school like Bruce Randolph, in Denver,” he said, “three years ago, it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado… but last May, 97% of seniors received their diploma.” He went on to describe a young woman who thanked her tearful principal at graduation, saying, “thanks for showing that we’re smart and we can make it.” So how did Principal Kristin Waters (now an administrator for the Denver Public School system) create such a drastic change? Is the new system actually working? What does this mean for the future of other failing schools?

There are no easy answers here. This model seems to be contributing to the steady increase in the school’s success, but that doesn’t guarantee that the students who go there are getting a high-quality education. If education reform was as easy as replacing the bad teachers, we wouldn’t still be here talking about it. If raising test scores was an accurate way to measure student learning, no one would be worried about “teaching to the test”—which, by the way, is probably partially to blame for Bruce Randolph’s success. While we can sit and complain about the how’s and the why’s, the fact is that the reform is working for The Bruce Randolph School, which means we might have gotten one teensy, tiny step closer to successfully reforming what I see as a failing educational system.

Honestly though, it does say quite a bit that the school was able to do what they did, outside of the traditional system. I applaud their efforts and at least it was a small start to a larger problem in our current public education system.